The Death Of Dr. Wiley -
'Murder, They Wrote'
By Wayne Madsen
CounterPunch.org
6-4-2

"The one person who was in a position to know about
the origin of the anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service met with a
very suspicious demise just a month after the attacks first began.

The reported "suicide" and then "accidental death" of
noted Harvard biophysics scientist and anthrax, Ebola, AIDS, herpes, and influenza
expert, Dr. Don C. Wiley, on the Interstate 55 Hernando De Soto Bridge that
links Memphis to West Memphis, Arkansas, was probably a well-planned murder,
according to local law enforcement officials in Tennessee and Arkansas.

After Wiley's friends and family discounted claims of suicide, the Memphis
coroner concluded on January 14, 2002 that Wiley had "accidentially"
fallen over the side of the bridge after a minor car accident.

Not so, say seasoned local law enforcement officials who originally assigned
homicide detectives to the case. Memphis police claim there was only 15 minutes
between the last time police had checked the bridge and the time they discovered
Wiley's abandoned vehicle. They suspected Wiley was murdered. However, the
local FBI office in Memphis stuck by its story that Wiley's death was not
the result of "foul play." A Memphis police detective said, "the
newspaper account of Wiley's accident did not clear anything up for me,"
adding, "everything attributed to the 'accident' could also be attributed
to something else."

However, according to U.S. intelligence sources, Wiley may have been the victim
of an intelligence agency hit. That jibes with local police comments that
the FBI and "other" U.S. agencies stepped in to prevent the local
Memphis police from taking a closer look into the case. Employees of St. Jude's
Childrens' Hospital in Memphis, on whose board Wiley served, were suddenly
deluged with unsubstantiated rumors that Wiley was a heavy drinker and despondent.

It is a classic intelligence agency ploy to spread disinformation about "suicide"
victims after their murders. The favorite rumors spread include those about
purported alcoholism, depression, homosexuality, auto-erotic asphyxia, drug
addiction, and an obsession with pornography, especially child pornography.

According to the local police, it would have been easy to determine if Wiley
was a heavy drinker and that would have shown up in his autopsy. The police
also reckon that if Wiley left the Peabody under the influence, four hours
later he should have been sober enough not to have fallen over the side of
the bridge. Also, the bridge railing is high enough that event the 6' 3"
Wiley could not have accidentally fallen over it without assistance. Add that
to the fact that no one in the history of the bridge had fallen over the side.

Police also feel that even at 4:00 AM, there should have been someone else
on the bridge who would have called the police about a person who was driving
down the interstate the wrong way. Due to the fact that access is restricted
to the bridge, one would have to have driven a long way on the wrong lane.
Some police are of the opinion Wiley was stuck with a needle and that one
reason he was dumped into the fast-moving Mississippi is that with the length
of his time in the water (one month), the needle mark evidence would have
largely disappeared.

And in yet another strange twist, on March 14, a bomb and two smaller explosive
devices were found at the Shelby County Regional Forensic Center, which houses
the morgue and Medical Examiner's Office that conducted Wiley's autopsy. Dr.
O.C, Smith, the medical examiner, told Memphis' Commercial Appeal, "We
have done several high-profile cases from Dr. Wiley to Katherine Smith (a
Department of Motor Vehicles employee mysteriously found burned to death in
her car after being charged in a federal probe with conspiracy to obtain fraudulent
drivers' licenses for men of Middle East origin) but there has been no indication
that we offended anyone . . . we just don't know if we were the attended target
or not."

Knowledgeable U.S. and foreign intelligence sources have revealed that Wiley
may have been silenced as a result of his discovery of U.S. government work
on biological warfare agents long after the U.S., along with the Soviet Union
and Britain, signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

The death of Wiley may be also linked to revelations recently
uncovered in South Africa. His expertise on genetic fingerprints for various
strains may have led him to particular countries and their bio-warfare projects.

The South African media has been abuzz with details of that nation's former
biological warfare program and its links to the CIA. The South African bio-chemical
war program was code-named Project Coast and was centered at the Roodeplat
Research Laboratories north of Pretoria. The lab maintained links to the US
biowarfare facility at Fort Detrick and Britain's Porton Down Laboratory.
The head of the South African program, Dr. Wouter Basson, was reportedly offered
a job with the CIA in the United States after the fall of the apartheid regime.
According to former South African National Intelligence Agency deputy director
Michael Kennedy, when Basson refused the offer, the CIA allegedly threatened
to kill him. Nevertheless, the U.S. pressured the new President Nelson Mandela
to turn over the records and fruits of Basson's work. Much of this work was
reportedly transported to Fort Detrick.

One of the South African's secret projects involved sending anthrax through
the mail. Among the techniques that fell into the hands of the Americans was
a method by which anthrax spores were, with deadly effect, incorporated on
to the gummed flaps of envelopes.

Many of Dr. Wiley's family and friends doubt he would have committed suicide.
The fact that he was certainly in a position to know about the origination
of various viruses and bacteria -- which could have led to the U.S. government
-- would have made him a prime target for a government seeking to cover up
its illegal work in biological warfare.

Wiley's Anthrax Research

And Wiley had a significant connection to anthrax research. Wiley was not
only a professor at Harvard but also conducted research at the Chevy Chase,
Maryland Howard Hughes Medical Center, which does work for the National Institutes
of Health. On October 1, 2001, just three days before the first reported anthrax
case in Florida, the Hughes Center announced that a joint Harvard-Hughes team
had identified a mouse gene that made mice resistant to anthrax bacteria.
Although the media failed to play it up later, that research involved using
Wiley's expertise on the immune system. The new gene, identified as Kif1C,
located in chromosome 11 of a mouse, enhanced the defense systems of special
immune cells, called macrophages, against the destructive effects of anthrax
bacteria.

Wiley's was not the only suspicious death of a scientist with knowledge of
biological defenses. Just three day before Wiley's death, Dr. Benito Que,
a Miami Medical School cellular biologist specializing in infectious diseases,
died in a violent attack. The Miami Herald reported Que died after "four
men armed with a baseball bat attacked him at his car." A week after
Wiley died, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a former scientist for Biopreparat, the
Soviet Union's biological weapons production factory, was found dead from
an alleged stroke in Wiltshire, not far from Britain's Porton Down biological
warfare center. Pasechnik had defected from the Soviet Union in 1989 and was
an expert on the Soviet Union's anthrax, smallpox, plague, and tularemia programs.
While at Biopreparat, Pasechnik worked for Alibek, who defected three years
later. When he died, Pasechnik was assisting the British government's efforts
in providing bio-defenses against anthrax.

Anthrax and Operation Northwoods

For those who disbelieve the possibility that the U.S. Government is the number
one suspect in the anthrax attacks, they are directed to James Bamford's book
on the National Security Agency, Body of Secrets. The book reveals that in
1962,Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer was planning, along
with other member of the Joint Chiefs, a virtual coup d'etat against the administration
of President Kennedy using acts of terrorism carried out by the military but
to be blamed on the Castro government in Cuba. The secret pan, code-named
Operation Northwoods, entailed having U.S. military personnel shoot innocent
people on the streets of American cities, sink boats carrying Cuban refugees
to Florida, and conduct terrorist bombings in Washington, DC, Miami and other
cities. Innocent people were to be framed for committing bombings and hijacking
planes. If John Glenn's liftoff from Cape Canaveral in February 1962 were
to end in an explosion, Castro would be blamed. Plans were made to shoot down
civilian aircraft en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama,
or Venezuela and then blame Cuba. The U.S. military also planned to attack
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both British colonies, and make it appear
that the Cubans had done it in order to bring Britain into a war with Cuba.

So far, the Bush administration has refused to support a full and independent
Congressional investigation into the events of September 11 and the later
events involving anthrax. It seems it and the three-letter agencies the administration
is so fond of praising, and funding, know more about the source of the anthrax
attacks than they are admitting. If the saying, "where there's smoke,
there's fire," has any basis of truth, the United States is in the midst
of a raging inferno. Who will answer the fire alarm?"

Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist based in Washington, DC. He can
be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com